


Ask A Question Clearly

by megyal



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-31
Updated: 2011-03-31
Packaged: 2017-10-17 10:16:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/175777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megyal/pseuds/megyal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A brief look into Kakashi and Iruka's counselling sessions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ask A Question Clearly

**Author's Note:**

> There are a few OC's. This was written for [](http://sejitsu.livejournal.com/profile)[**sejitsu**](http://sejitsu.livejournal.com/), and I typed it out on my phone! See, I'm trying to get out of the habit of typing on my laptop while lying in bed so I write on my phone while lying in the couch. PROGRESS.

Rie Tamura placed the day's files in the sealed cabinet, carefully protecting the thoughts and confessions of her patients. The narrow door to the front area was pushed open in a rather hurried manner, and her assistant Gojo (he was really her apprentice, and worryingly excitable to boot) blew inside her office, his hair standing out in wild waves around his head.

"Rie-sensei," he said, the words puffing out of him with every sharp pant. He seemed exhilarated and slightly terrified at the same time. "A jonin is here to see you."

"To see me?" Rie eyed the old clock hung discreetly above the door. The furniture was angled so that only she could see it when sitting at the desk or in her own counselling-chair. "But we close in a little over half-an-hour. Is it a message from the Hokage?" The leader of the village asked for her input at times when dealing with opposing factions, or even disagreements among the denizens of Konoha, shinobi and civilian alike.

Gojo shook his head. "No, Rie-sensei. He says he would like to talk."

Rie eyed the flush climbing up on Gojo's sharp cheekbones. "Who is the jonin out there?"

Gojo visibly drew himself together, and blinked a few times. "It's Kakashi Hatake," he answered in a tone that was soaked in wonderment. Rie felt her own eyebrows lift until they may have been interfering with her hairline and then cleared her throat.

"I told him that he wouldn't get a full session," Gojo said, "and then I asked if he wanted to schedule an appointment for tomorrow, or maybe the day after." He gazed at her earnestly and she nodded in approval. That was the right thing to do, although it may have been a bit daunting for him. "He said no."

Rie nodded again, and then sighed. She would listen to anyone who needed her help, no matter their rank or status, but this one made her feel understandably nervous; she hoped that it would not show on her face...but could that eye of his catch anything like that?

"Show him in, Gojo, please."

Gojo nodded, and dashed out again, managing to close the door quietly behind himself. Rie took the moment to compose herself, adjusting the sleeves and high neckline of her clothing with sharp, precise movements. When the door opened, she heard Gojo say, "Go right in, Hatake-san."

A voice responded, "Thank you," in low, deep tones and the man they called the Copy-nin stepped inside her office.

Her first impression was of that pale hair, held to impossible heights by his tilted forehead-protector. She smiled at him in welcome, and he nodded, his exposed eye locked onto her face. Rie kept her expression relaxed and mild, watching him as he stepped into the room and shut the door firmly.

"Good evening," he said, and she supposed he was offering her a smile of his own, because she could see the movement of his cheeks under the black mask which obscured his face from the nose down. Wrinkles deepened the corner of his exposed eye, but it didn't seem fully true, that smile.

"I'm sorry that I've come in so late," he continued, sliding one hand into his pocket and shifting his weight onto the opposite leg. "I was told by the Hokage that if a shinobi needed a sympathetic ear, then they could depend on you." His dark gaze drilled into hers. "He also said that you were sealed against revealing any personal information of your clients."

Rie felt pleasure at the Hokage's recommendation mixed in with a cold kind of annoyance at the presence of the seal. "I was sealed by the Fourth when I began to offer my services to shinobi," she said, wondering if it would draw any reaction from him. It didn't; he looked at her as if she had informed him of the day's weather. "The only person allowed to access any knowledge I've gained is the current Hokage, and the process can be tedious, and painful on their part."

She told him this to allay any concerns he might have, but he simply flicked that weighty gaze away from her, taking in the modest furniture to one side of the small, but comfortable space.

"Would you like to sit down?" Rie offered, moving over to sit down in her own favourite armchair.

"I prefer to stand."

"All right." She rested her hands in her lap, and just looked at him. He would talk in his own time, she supposed. She wondered how much past the closing time she would have to wait before he finished speaking... if he ever got to it, that is. Shinobi were a notoriously tight-lipped lot; not just because of the actions they carried out while undergoing missions (and Rie had heard stories that had given her nightmares for days), but also due to the fact that they were supposed to be the strongest. Rie had witnessed many of them crack underneath the weight of their own strength.

She wondered what could have brought this man, the pride of Konoha, to see her. She heard it said that he was a prime candidate to be Hokage after the Sandaime stepped down once more; seeing him up close, it wasn't very hard to believe. He stood in that laconic fashion, now inspecting the books on the shelf which took up an entire wall, spanning from the floor to the ceiling, but she could sense the enormous power which emanated from him, reined in by his will alone.

She sat still, and waited.

He turned back to her after a long moment spent just staring at the spine of one book in particular and said, "I find I'm very angry," in a conversational tone of voice. Rie didn't move, not even to tilt an eyebrow curiously.

She said, "Oh?" and offered nothing more. His expression, what she could see of it, seemed wry, as if he knew exactly what tactic she was attempting to utilize on him.

Rie ventured out a little more: "Do you want to share what you think is making you angry?"

"That is why I'm here, isn't it? To...'share'." There was a touch of arrogance and mockery in his drawl. "And I don't _think_ it's making me angry. It _is_."

"What is it?" Rie asked, having decided that a person like Kakashi would respond better to very direct conversation. However, he didn't answer immediately. He turned away again and went back to perusing the titles of her books. He reached out, and plucked one out from where it rested against its compatriots. He held it open in the middle of his gloved palms.

"I was captain to a failed mission," Kakashi said, more to the book than to the counsellor. "The mission failed primarily due to one person. That person, and their mistakes, have made me angry."

"I see," Rie said, wondering what it would be like to have Kakashi Hatake's ire focused on someone; it would probably be a chilling kind of anger, or maybe she was just making inferences from the colour of his hair. He could have a hot rage, she mused, the kind that preceded a lot of blood being spilt onto the ground.

"Is this person a friend of yours?"

"I would not call him my friend." There was that touch of arrogance again, barely threading through the lazy tones. Rie remembered that he had been made jonin at a very young age; how insufferable he would have been.

"He is someone you have depended on before, to carry out his part of the mission properly?" she tried, but Kakashi shook his head even before she completed the query."Then-"

"I can't explain it," Kakashi said, his words gaining ragged edges. "My expectations of his actions were reasonably low. And yet, I--" He broke off with a sharp sound and put the book back in place with an unreasonably hard shove. Rie imagined she could feel the air grow heavy, as it might before lightning struck.

He stood there near the books, half-turned away from her. She looked at the graceful slope of his neck and the strong line of his jaw with an objective eye; he was attractive, in that mysterious, dangerous way that a lot of people found appealing.

"Is this person aware of your anger?"

The droop of his shoulders went tense for a bare second, and went back to their nonchalant angle. "He is. For some reason, that annoys me further."

"Is he the only one that is the target of this emotion from you?"

He laughed; it wasn't a very nice sound. "You're either very perceptive or just lucky to hit on that. No, I am also angry at myself. Apparently I still expected too much of him. He didn't live up to it. Few people do," he finished in a matter-of-fact way.

"But he managed to make you angry. Even though you were aware that he would not live up to your standards." Rie was careful just to reiterate what was said, and not add anything new. She wanted the issue to be as clear as possible.

Kakashi nodded. "That is the problem. Better shinobi than he have done greater things, and paid for them with their lives. His stupid mistake caused the deaths of hostages."

Rie suddenly felt very sorry for the object of Kakashi's disdain. She opened her mouth, but he spoke up again, more to himself than to her.

"He's not them. Just a chuunin, who has to live with a mistake."

"It must be hard to carry that knowledge around," Rie said, softly.

"Hmm." The sound was noncommittal. He turned around, a surprisingly brisk move, and eyed the clock. "Time is up."

Rie blinked, feeling as if she was waking up from a dream, and stared at the clock herself; it was one minute to closing-time.

"Oh, I could--"

"Thank you for your assistance," Kakashi said and was at the door so quickly that Rie blinked again. "Good-bye."

The door was opened and he stepped out before Rie could put in another word.

Gojo came in a few beats later, his eyes wide. "Wow," was all he had to say. Rie shook her head at him and rose up out of her chair, with the intention of starting a case-file for Kakashi. She stumbled a little on the way, suddenly drained.

"I'll create the file, Sensei," Gojo said; he spoke with uncharacteristic quietness. "I'll leave it on your desk for you to complete tomorrow." He hesitated a bit before speaking again, the words tumbling over each other in his haste to get them out as quickly as possible. "It must have been so weird, right? Talking with Hatake-san?"

"It was unusual," Rie conceded and smiled at him. "I will see you tomorrow, Gojo."

As she exited her office into the warm evening, and walked slowly past the hospital on her way home, she thought that 'unusual' didn't really cover it at all.

\--

Iruka Umino's session went a bit more normally, at least at first. He made an appointment and came in on time. He sat when she asked him if he would like to and smiled shyly, shaking his head at her offer of tea.

"What would you like to talk about today?" she asked, a reasonably benign opening, and the open expression on his face froze, and began to fold in on itself. Rie watched this process with some interest. She'd seen shinobi do it before, of course, but on Iruka's face it seemed...well, just _more_ of it.

He reached up and brushed at his hair, ending the movement with a tug at the end of his ponytail.

"Do you like your job?" The tone he used wasn't abrupt, but the question was. Rie took in his shuttered expression, at how desperation and dismay slipped through the cracks. As a rule, she tried to direct the questions back to the client, but it might be helpful for Iruka if she answered in this situation.

So, she did. "I like it most times. There are moments I feel as if I can't do it anymore."

Iruka nodded and then tried a watery smile on for size. Rie thought it looked too ghastly on his face. He was so young, she thought, or maybe it was that sweet air he had about him. Whatever it was, he was _different_.

"I don't think I'm supposed to be a shinobi," Iruka said, and then let out a slightly-crazed laugh. "Isn't that the stupidest thing you've ever heard?"

"No, Iruka. It's not stupid at all."

"My mother was ANBU," he said, and slumped down in his chair more so that he could rest his head back and close his eyes. "My dad was jonin. They were very good at their jobs. Dedicated, you know?"

"I can imagine they were," Rie said, and watched Iruka's toes curl up in his sandals, a manifestation of his misery.

"I'll be a shopkeeper," Iruka whispered. "Or a farmer."

Rie cast about for a question, anything at all. "Is there something you like about being a ninja?"

Iruka lifted his head, blinking at her. "I like training," he said, slowly. "I like working with weapons, making them and fixing them. I'm good at traps..."

"Then what is it that you don't like? Rie asked when it was obvious that Iruka wasn't going to continue. His mouth curled into a frown.

"The human body contains six quarts of blood," he intoned. "It looks like more when a person bleeds it all out. The sound a katana makes when it's going through someone's spine..." he shuddered. "Has anyone ever thought about how awful it is?"

"I can safely say that a lot of shinobi think about that," Rie told him. The seal on the back of her tongue tingled in warning.

Iruka said,"I was on a mission and because of me, it failed."

Rie was glad he wasn't looking in her direction at that moment, because she felt her eyes widen. "I see."

"No, you don't!" Iruka's eyes were wide and very brown when his gaze fixed on her. "You don't! You're _safe_ here, in this office, you _don't know_."

Rie looked at him, very steadily. Iruka didn't drop his gaze, and again she thought how young he appeared.

"Would you like to talk about the mission? The one you said you failed at."

"No," Iruka told her, and then he shrugged. "Yes, I guess. You won't tell anyone, anyway. Right?" He peered at her, and she shook her head.

"Sealed, remember?" She tried smiling again, but she was oddly unsettled by him. It was kind of funny; she had felt a bit more at ease in Kakashi Hatake's presence, whereas this young ninja was far more successful at throwing her off-balance. "You can tell me as much as you wish."

The story slid out of him in fits and starts. Konoha had been asked to quell an escalating situation between two warring villages. Fighters from one village had captured some of their enemies from the other, and Iruka had been assigned to create a distraction so his team-captain and the other members could invade the building in which the hostages were being held.

"I set off the charges too early," Iruka said. By this time, he was sitting forward, elbows resting on his uniform-clad thighs, hands clasped. "The kidnappers heard...and the hostages were executed."

His head remained bowed, and he was very quiet for a long time. Rie let him be, and waited for him to talk.

"The captain hates me," Iruka said. "He sees me on the street and just...looks at me. Like I'm not supposed to be there."

"Are you sure he hates you?" Rie asks, even though the seal simmered on the surface of her tongue, another warning that she shouldn't go too far. What was said by one shinobi-client should not be shared with another.

"You haven't seen the way he looks at people. At me." Iruka's shoulders shifted in a half-hearted shrug. "He's...the best. He's amazing."

 _He is_ , Rie agreed wordlessly. "I can't say how he feels about you or not, Iruka," she said aloud. "But as humans, even shinobi are bound to make mistakes. Your captain may have made some of his own in his own career."

"I really doubt that," Iruka muttered, but he lifted his head. "Do you think so?"

"It's possible."

Sighing, he let his head droop down again. "I can get past this," he whispered. "The memory of my parents...I need to make them proud."

"What about yourself, Iruka?" She genuinely wanted to know, and his small, bitter laugh was surprising.

"I don't know. I don't know myself, sometimes." When he lifted his head again, there was a little smile on his face. "I guess I could take the time to learn."

"That's a very nice idea, Iruka."

His smile tilted wryly. "You don't tell people what to do, don't you? Except where you actually do."

Rie opened her mouth to make some response, to refute what he said in the most professional and sincere manner, but then he looked away and remained silent for the rest of their session.

\--

Kakashi Hatake strode into Rie's office the same way he had six years ago: a little over a half-hour before the office closed.

"You've changed a lot of things," he observed, standing exactly where he had before, sentinel to her bookshelf. "New assistant. New furniture."

"Well, life moves on, Hatake-san." Rie settled in her chair, trying to find a comfortable position for herself. In any case, if this session went as the last one did, then she would need to be seated only for a short while. "Are you still angry?"

His laughter was surprisingly bright. "I don't think I was really angry the last time, you know. And the focus of my anger...he was the wrong person to be angry at."

"Oh?"

"Yes, _oh_." Kakashi threw her a complex glance, humour and sarcasm at once. "Hostages died on my mission. I was the team-captain, and the fault is my own."

"Does the person with whom you were angry...do they know that you don't feel that way anymore?"

"Hmm." Kakashi took out a book and inspected it closely. Rie had heard about his Icha Icha, and stifled her smile. "Possibly."

"Then--"

"Life moves on," Kakashi said, flipping the pages. "People change. He may know by now. Have you ever been in love?"

The non-sequitur was jarring, but not outside of her ability to answer. "I have. And you?"

He laughed again, and it rang out clear from behind his mask. It was the laughter of someone who really wanted to be happy.

"Have you ever thought, Tamura-san, that anger and love sometimes feel like the same thing?"

Rie thought about the sad eyes of the young chuunin six years ago, and the quietly determined and capable sensei she had greeted in the market last week, trailed by a rabble of loud yet obedient students.

"I can see where they might be. Are you in love?"

"I think our time is up," Kakashi said, and Rie was sure he was actually grinning behind his mask. That was not so surprising. "Thank you for listening, Tamura-san."

He exited as rapidly as he did the last time, a blur in the space of her office and out through the door. Rie shook her head, standing up and stretching, rubbing a sore spot in her back. She went over to her window, which overlooked a park, and a few streets. Iruka-sensei was walking slowly, obviously on his way home. Kakashi caught up with him, and they continued on together, talking in what seemed to be a self-conscious yet friendly manner.

She couldn't be sure...but Iruka may have glanced back in the direction of her office and smiled.


End file.
